setting off a huricane
by but seriously
Summary: AU: Matt's full of little facts tonight. / matt jeremy, bonnie


**setting off a hurricane**

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Everyone dies a couple of times in their lives, Matt says.

The door of the shed creaks a little when Matt pushes it open, and since Jeremy's not asking why, he continues anyway: Your heart stops for just a beat whenever you sneeze. Something about your nerve endings tingling and your chest muscles tightening.

(Jeremy doesn't know. Jeremy's not listening.)

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Matt says even Pope Gregory VII believed it.

"Why do you think," Matt says as he's rummaging through the drawer for a hammer, "we say _bless you _whenever someone sneezes?"

"I dunno, man," Jeremy replies absently, looping a length of rope around his arm.

"The bubonic plague," Matt says, his arms disappearing into the drawer. "When it was raging through Europe, and people kept sneezing and shit. It was like a symptom of the plague or something." Matt finds what he's looking for and turns back to Jeremy. "And so he said God bless you, to save them from certain death."

(Jeremy thinks Matt's feeling especially morbid tonight. Jeremy doesn't say anything.)

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It's kind of cool, Matt says. If you like that sort of thing.

He stops trying to make the tent stand and tilts his head to the side. Pretty cool, don't you think? Sneezing, dying.

Matt says that in that instant, in that moment, when you take a deep breath and hold it, when your eyes squeeze shut, when the pressure changes in your chest, when the air comes out rushing out of you, when your heart stops for just a fraction of a second, you're dead.

Matt gives the tent a pat, and dust swirls up around them glittering in the evening light.

(Jeremy can't help it—he sneezes.)

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"Boom," Matt says. "You're dead."

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Matt says it's like a butterfly flapping its wings, and a couple of weeks later a hurricane starts up on the other side of the planet.

The chaos theory, Matt says, spreading out the blankets and the throw pillows as artistically as he can. A butterfly flaps its wings and a hurricane forms. You sneeze and you die. The chaos theory.

"No, man." Jeremy shakes his head. "The Matt theory."

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Jeremy says Matt's wrong.

They're huddled over Jeremy's little-used Biology textbook, and Jeremy jabs at the paragraph he'd been skimming over.

Jeremy says that the changing pressure in your chest also changes your blood flow, which changes the rhythm of your heartbeat.

Your heart doesn't stop, Jeremy says. It's just prolonged.

"Your heart skipping a beat?" Jeremy says. "Your heart stopping?"

"Myth," Jeremy says. "All myth."

Matt arranges their shot glasses in a straight line, and then glances at the textbook.

"Well, shit," Matt says.

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But wouldn't it be great to know what it's like? Matt says.

(Jeremy doesn't have to ask what. Jeremy already knows.)

For real this time, Matt says. Not coming back. Not being saved. Not being the ones left behind. Just dying.

Jeremy lets his eyes trail across the night sky and murmurs something about the stars being bright.

Matt says that those aren't stars. Those are just satellites in the sky. Ninety percent of the stars you see aren't actually stars. Or hovering balls of burning gas.

(Matt's full of little facts tonight.)

Jeremy sits up and pulls his legs out of the tent. Matt lifts himself onto his elbows and takes the shot of tequila Jeremy hands him.

"Here's to sneezing and not dying," Jeremy says.

"Here's to living and breathing," Matt says.

They throw their heads back and grimace, just as Bonnie peeks her head around the corner of the house. Her eyes are still red.

"Looks like it's just the three of us," Jeremy says in lieu of a greeting. Bonnie bites her lower lip and tightens her grip on the shawl around her shoulders. Matt just shrugs, because he's run out of things to say by now.

Because Elena and Stefan and Damon and Caroline and fucking _Klaus,_ they're all gone. He thinks that this is the sick part of reality, the part where people say 'you can't have your cake and eat it too'. But he's not going to say that.

"Just the three of us," is what he says instead.

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**fin**

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****Just a little something I wrote while I was away at camp. Originally, it was supposed to be a tiny Matt/Elena oneshot. But then I got back on my five-day break and watched the rest of TVD and just started getting plot bunnies like, What if Klaus really had died? What if Elena hadn't been fed vampire blood? etcetera etcetera.

This doesn't really make sense, and I don't blame you if you're still confused. Review anyway? :)


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